Unbury Our Dead with Song

Mukoma wa Ngugi

Unbury Our Dead With Song brilliantly evokes the Tizita, a form of Ethiopian music often referred to in the West as African Blues.
Four talented musicians who are competing to see who can sing the best Tizita.

Taking place in an illegal boxing hall in Nairobi, the competition is covered by a US educated Kenyan journalist, John Thandi Manfredi, who writes for a popular tabloid. He follows the musicians back to Ethiopia in order to learn more about the Tizita and their lives. As he learns more about the Tizita and the multiple meanings of beauty, he uncovers that behind each of the musicians, there are layered lives and secrets.

The characters could not be more diverse – The Diva (whose humble home life belies her glamorous façade), The Taliban Man (an Ethiopian rapper), The Corporal (with a troubling military history) and Miriam (the oldest bar tender in Kenya). His journey takes him from a seedy boxing club in Nairobi to the idyllic Ethiopian countryside and on to raucous parties in Addis Ababa set to a soundtrack of stirring Tizita
performances.

A love letter to beauty, music and the imagination, Unbury Our Dead with Song captures how it feels to have an encounter with the sublime.

Publication Date: July 2021.